1000 leave rebel Aleppo in new evacuation

The civil war in Syria has caused incalculable hardship to innocent people in the embattled city for over a decade.

Syrian activists say the last buses meant to evacuate rebels and civilians from Aleppo have been delayed for almost 24 hours.

With President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its allies regaining full control over Syria’s largest city, the almost six-year-old Syrian civil war is entering a new phase.

About 25,000 people have been evacuated since a ceasefire deal halted the army’s offensive one week ago, the Red Cross said.

This has led to suggestions that Turkey agreed to Russian Federation helping Assad to retake all of Aleppo, while Moscow vowed not to interfere in Turkey’s own military operation in northern Syria.

Moreover, the Russian FM Sergei Lavrov noted that the three countries have agreed to prioritize the fight against terrorism over the removal of Russia- and Iran-backed Assad, who has designated all opposition forces “terrorists”. According to Russia Today, Putin’s English-language mouthpiece, “Atlanticists are appalled that Moscow, Ankara and Tehran are now fully engaged in designing a post-Battle of Aleppo Syrian future, to the graphic exclusion of” North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and its Gulf allies.

Knowing that the creation of such safe zones will require both an enormous financial commitment but also military personnel, Trump called for the oil-rich Sunni Gulf states (presumably including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar), which have been supporting rebel forces, to band their resources together for this vaguely-defined humanitarian project.

“We do not have independent United Nations access to the buses, so we are not able to enter and access people; that does not take away from the protection concerns that we do have and continue to have”, he said.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the last rebels and civilians continued to pour out of the embattled city of Aleppo. The recent fall of Palmyra to Islamic State fighters functioned as a chilling reminder to Moscow of the deadly extent of the work that is left in Syria before the country is secure. For much of it, Aleppo’s eastern districts had been the rebels’ most important stronghold. “It’s about more than showing up, it’s also realizing that these people could be our cousins and our aunts and our uncles and just our loved ones”.

Several residents disembarking from the evacuation buses in the early hours of Monday were bundled up in coats. “They kill Syrian people with their nefarious sectarian hatred”. “They keep asking why people didn’t help them in Aleppo”. The sick and wounded include 67 children, Jasarevic said.

Around 60 buses have entered to pick up the remaining 3,000 fighters and their families, said Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.